


Live-streaming the final days of Rome

by Emjen_Enla



Series: Doom Days [2]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Disordered Eating, Drug Abuse, Dubious Self-Care, Emetophobia, F/M, Fascism, Gen, Grace’s ghost as a personification of Tommy’s suicidal thoughts, Hangover, Laudanum, Post-Season 5, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Thoughts, Tommy Shelby: Socialist in Denial, Tommy Shelby’s Unending Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24776419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla
Summary: Tommy Shelby was running late. Or Tommy Shelby returns to London post-s5.
Relationships: Ada Shelby & Tommy Shelby, Grace Burgess/Tommy Shelby, Tommy Shelby & Jessie Eden, Tommy Shelby & Oswald Mosley, Tommy Shelby/Lizzie Stark
Series: Doom Days [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1762021
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	Live-streaming the final days of Rome

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Doom Days” by Bastille.
> 
> So, yeah, here’s an ill-advised sequel to the Tommy and Frances fic. It’s not Lizzie, Tommy and Arthur questioning Sandra, but it is Tommy angsting for 6K. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> This fic does reference “Clippings” (a pre-s5 Tommy and Ada fic I wrote) but I tried to write it so it would make sense if you hadn’t read that fic.

**Monday, December 9, 1929**

Tommy Shelby was running late.

In another time—another life—the family would be ribbing him incessantly for this. Tommy hadn’t been late involuntarily since he’d returned from France, and, really, was choosing to be late as a show of power really being late at all? In a simpler time, the family would have gotten a lot of pleasure from this whole situation, now it was unlikely anyone would notice, unless this lapse fucked everything up the rest of the way, which was probably more likely than he wanted to admit.

The worst part was that he didn’t really have an excuse. It wasn’t like he’d overslept because he didn’t remember the last time he’d slept. He supposed he might have passed out in his office for a couple hours on Saturday after they’d interrogated Sandra about Johnny Dogs— _don’t think about that_ , the small sense of self-preservation he still possessed chanted—but it was also likely he’d just been…gone for a while but had still remained outwardly awake. Either way he hadn’t slept at all Saturday night or Sunday night despite needing to be in London on Monday morning.

Normally when he had to be at Parliament on Monday morning he drove to London on Sunday night. This avoided the minor misery of getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to drive four hours from Warwickshire to London. It was also helpful because he was often sick to his stomach from exhaustion in the mornings and not having as far to drive to get to Parliament generally let him stay in bed until his stomach settled a little.

This weekend was different. When Mosley had called on Sunday saying that he wanted to meet Tommy at ten o’clock on Monday, Tommy had thought about getting in the car and driving to London like usual, but he hadn’t. The thought of lying awake in his London apartment waiting to face Grace’s disappointment was awful. At least in bed at Arrow House he had Lizzie’s breathing to listen to and he could remind himself why he couldn’t die just yet. He’d gotten the family into this mess and Arthur and Lizzie needed him to get them all out of it again. Once that was done he could die in peace, but he couldn’t fuck off and leave the family alone when they were so obviously incapable of fixing it themselves.

But that didn’t make getting up and getting on with fucking business any easier. He’d spent most of Sunday night getting fantastically drunk in an attempt to get at least a little sleep before facing Mosley but he’d still spent the night staring at the ceiling focusing on Lizzie’s breathing in an attempt to drown out all the other noise. The shovels on the walls were as bad as they’d ever been, but sometimes it sounded like there was a third person in the room and he knew that was Grace lying in wait and judging him for not coming to join her.

He’d prayed for dawn but when it came his motivation was gone. He knew he needed to get a move on and drive to London but he couldn’t make himself get out of bed. He’d laid there cursing himself for his laziness, but he couldn’t get moving. When he finally managed to haul himself out of bed and into his suit and out to his car he was running so late no amount of speeding could make it up.

He arrived at Parliament half an hour after he was supposed to be in Mosley’s office and he still had to drop things off in his own office. That was bad because it was suspicious. He was fully confident that Mosley hadn’t suspected him when the plan had gone wrong on Friday night, but that didn’t mean Mosley wasn’t capable of starting to suspect Tommy at any moment. He had to be careful. One wrong move and he’d blow everything and end up in prison with no way to fix anything.

He hurried as best as he was able, but whatever had made it so hard to get up this morning was still dragging at him. On top of that he had a pounding headache and light hurt his eyes. He’d had to stop a couple times on the drive to throw up on the side of the road which hadn’t really helped either. All the alcohol from last night had obviously been a bad idea, especially since it hadn’t helped him sleep anyway. He should probably drink some water.

So, yeah, things were not going well, even before he reached his office and saw the woman sitting on the bench outside it waiting for him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed when he reached her.

“Waiting for you,” Jessie Eden said, jutting her chin out.

“You can’t be here,” Tommy breathed, leaning in. It took all his self-control not to shout. His heart was pounding so loudly he could hear it in his head and his chest felt tight. Jessie’s presence shouldn’t cause such blind panic, but somehow it did anyway. “I can’t be seen with you.”

“Why not?” Jessie asked leaning forward. They were so close together that he could feel her breath of his face. “Because you’re a fascist now?”

“He can’t—” Tommy began but lost the words in the overwhelming horror of what would happen if someone saw him and Jessie Eden talking and reported to Mosley. He pulled away and fumbled his keys out of his pocket. His hands were not steady and he dropped the keys twice before Jessie got up, snatched the keyring off the floor and unlocked the door herself.

“Well?” she asked when the office door was firmly closed between them and the rest of the world. “Do you have an explanation? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you betrayed both the communists and the Labour Party and got in bed with a fascist.”

“Why are you here, Jessie?” he asked. “Don’t you know better than to show your face in fucking Parliament?”

“I want to know what happened on Friday night,” she said. “Don’t treat me like an idiot. I saw you and your brother that night. I know something happened. Tell me what it was.”

He turned on his heel, grinding his teeth, and made his way over to the sideboard where he poured himself a generous measure of whiskey.

“Really?” Jessie asked, momentarily diverted. “ _Now_? It’s ten thirty in the morning!”

“I have a hangover,” he said which was probably too honest. He wasn’t even sure how much the whiskey would help. What he probably really needed was a dose of laudanum but he’d been trying to cut back over the weekend in an attempt to avoid having to explain to Grace why he’d failed at joining her. Still if he didn’t have a dose soon he’d be skirting the edge of withdrawal. He’d gotten himself off opiates once before, but he’d had something to live for then not to mention fucking time. He had neither now. He was tempted to just dose himself now, but he didn’t want to be high when he met with Mosley so he’d have to hold out until that was over.

“The man you had escort me out on Friday night said something about a plan going wrong,” Jessie said. “What were you planning at that rally that didn’t work out?”

“It’s not your business, Jessie,” he said slamming part of his drink. “Now, you need to leave because I have a meeting I’m late for and—”

“A meeting with him?” Jessie said, her eyes narrowing.

“Jessie—” he began.

“No,” she said. “I am not leaving until you explain yourself, because otherwise I’m going to assume you’ve betrayed us.”

Tommy was about to ask her how she’d gotten the idea that he was on her side at all, but he had actively tried to give her that idea. Before he could come up with something more appropriate to say there was a knock on his office door. “Mr. Shelby, are you there?” Mosley called from outside.

“Fuck,” Tommy and Jessie breathed simultaneously.

Tommy looked around. There was absolutely no explanation for Jessie Eden being in his office. Even if Mosley assumed they’d been fucking it would still be damning. Tommy felt his breathing begin to speed up as he tried to see a way out. Mosley couldn’t see Jessie here but there was no way to leave the office save through the door Mosley was currently standing outside of. Hell, they were lucky Mosley hadn’t just barged through the door without warning. They needed to do _something_.

“Hide under the desk,” he hissed to Jessie. She nodded, bolted around behind the desk and dropped down out of sight.

Tommy took a deep breath and polished off the rest of his glass of whiskey. His hand was visibly shaking. He set the glass down quickly. That was not something he wanted Mosley to see.

“Shelby!” Mosley called.

“Yes?” Tommy called. “Come in.”

Mosley opened the door and stepped inside. It felt like the temperature of the room immediately dropped, though surely that must be in Tommy’s head.

“I seem to recall us agreeing to meet at ten,” Mosley said.

“I apologize, I’m running late this morning,” Tommy said injecting as much authenticity into his voice as possible. “I was just about to come to your office.”

“Yes, well I’m obviously here now,” Mosley said. “We have some things we need to discuss.”

“That we do,” Tommy agreed. “Do you want a drink?”

“It’s ten thirty in the morning,” Mosley said.

“Of course,” Tommy smiled.

“We need to talk about Friday night,” Mosley said.

“It was a mess,” Tommy said, completely honestly.

“Indeed,” Mosley said. “I heard Jessie Eden was there. Did you know that?”

“My men were the ones who chased her off,” Tommy said because that looked good and was probably something Mosley would figure out about anyway.

“They found the body of a man with a rifle in the lighting box as well,” Mosley said slowly. His tone made Tommy’s hair stand on end. Mosley suspected something. He had to. “Had you heard of that?”

“No,” Tommy said. He thought about lighting a cigarette, partially for something to do with his hands and partially in an attempt to seem casual, but lighting it would be interesting because his hands were still trembling and that would just make him look nervous. He didn’t try.

“The police were able to identify him,” Mosley said in the same hair-raising tone as before. “They said his name was Barney Thompson. He was from Birmingham, and he served in the Warwickshire Yeomanry. Did you know him?”

“I don’t know everyone from Birmingham who was in France, Mr. Mosley,” Tommy said, sliding back into comfortable misdirection; this was much easier than outright lying.

“He was a sniper,” Mosley said. “He would have stood out a bit.”

“And I was a tunneller; we were rarely above ground.”

“He was confined in an asylum in London until recently when he escaped. Then he apparently came to Birmingham and decided to try to kill me,” Mosley said. It wasn’t a direct question so Tommy said nothing. “He was confined to the asylum after committing a murder in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded street. Do you remember that?”

“Vaguely,” Tommy said. This was actually true. He’d been so out of touch with the world those first few weeks home that what had happened to Barney felt like a half-forgotten nightmare. “It was in the papers, wasn’t it?”

“I believe it was,” Mosley said. He was frowning now, looking a bit disappointed. Tommy obviously wasn’t saying what he’d been hoping to hear. Tommy couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. “You’re sure you’ve never met this man?”

Tommy decided the time had come to go on the offensive. “What is the point of all these questions, Mr. Mosley? It’s starting to sound like you think I had something to with this assassin. Why would I want to do something like that?”

Mosley smiled thinly. It appeared he hadn’t expected Tommy to notice, let alone call him out on it. That said a lot for the collective intelligence of Mosley’s usual associates, which was a realization that actually made Tommy feel a little better. “I don’t know,” Mosley said. “A socialist like yourself might feel threatened by my new party. The communists obviously are; your run-in with Jessie Eden on Friday night demonstrates that.”

“I’m not a socialist any more than you are,” Tommy said. He wasn’t sure why that felt like a lie. Hadn’t the last ten years proven that he’d left such idealism behind him long ago? “You have my loyalty.”

“Hmm,” Mosley mused. “Indeed.” He didn’t look quite convinced, but after a moment he changed subjects, “Anyway, I think the fiasco on Friday night is very salvageable. Proof that those in power feel threatened by our message and want it stopped. It will help assure our followers of our righteousness.”

Tommy’s stomach turned over and for an instant he was sure he was going to throw up. This was not what was supposed to happen. Mosley was supposed to be dead. Tommy was supposed to be focusing on how to kill the new British Fascist Party right now. Instead he was hearing how his failed plan had just made things worse.

After a moment he was able to control the panic and swallow down the nausea. “That’s good,” he told Mosley. “On Friday night it seemed like everything was falling apart.” In fact, it still seemed like everything was falling apart—probably because everything actually was.

Mosley kept talking, about plans for the future, probably, though Tommy could barely pay attention. After a while, Mosley evidently decided he had other things to do and left. Tommy tried not to appear obviously relieved.

“How do you put up with him?” Jessie asked when the door had been closed behind Mosley for a few minutes.

Tommy had forgotten Jessie was there and only managed to keep from jumping through long practice. He ignored her comment and collapsed into one of the chairs in front of his desk. He pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead. His head was killing him. His nerves were fried. He needed Jessie to leave. He needed a dose of laudanum.

Jessie stepped carefully around his desk and sat down in the chair next to him. After a moment she pulled out a battered box of cigarettes and offered him one. He took it numbly and allowed her to light it before she lit her own. His hands were visibly shaking, and while Jessie obviously noticed she didn’t comment. They smoked in silence for a while.

“You know, he still suspects you,” Jessie said eventually. “You didn’t do that great a job at dodging his suspicion.”

“I know,” Tommy said. There was nothing else to say.

“What exactly did you do on Friday night?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Tommy knew that he shouldn’t tell her anything. There were so many things he didn’t know and if they were being suspicious of— _don’t think about it!_ His brain chanted. Well, given where suspicion currently lay, he couldn’t trust anyone. Still, Jessie was herself and if anyone could be trusted to not secretly be on Mosley’s payroll it was Jessie Eden.

“On Friday night, I broke an old friend from the war out of an asylum, gave him a gun and told him to shoot Oswald Mosley,” he admitted. “Only someone shot my friend first.”

Jessie’s jaw dropped. “What the—that’s insane. What made you think that would work?”

“We need to kill Mosley’s message,” Tommy tried to defend himself. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Thomas,” Jessie looked away for a moment to gather herself. “Yes, we need to kill Mosley’s message, but you can’t do that by literally killing him. He’ll just become a martyr to fascism. His followers with become even more devoted.”

Tommy shied away from that for a moment. The thought that not only had he failed at executing his plan but that it would have made things worse if it had succeeded was almost too horrible to contemplate. He finally gave up the fight, fished a bottle of laudanum out of his pocket and knocked it back. When he lowered it again, Jessie was watching him, her gaze sharp.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Laudanum,” he admitted, not quite sure why he was being honest.

“Laud—” Jessie cursed under her breath and looked away again. She was very quiet for a few minutes then said, still without looking at him, “Thomas, have you considered that maybe being an MP isn’t good for you?”

Tommy stiffened. “Just because you don’t like my plan doesn’t mean that—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jessie interrupted. “You’ve actually been a good MP, better than I thought you’d be, to be honest. What I meant is that this might not be good for your health.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, I don’t think you are,” Jessie pushed on. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week and I don’t think you’ve stopped shaking the entire time I’ve been here. I know from our previous interactions recently that you’re drinking to excess. You admitted as much when I got here this morning; I’ve never known you to have a hangover. Not to mention, I know for a fact that you didn’t have a laudanum addiction when I met you. There are amble signs that you’re crumbling and I can only imagine it’s the stress of being an MP getting to you. Maybe you should take some time off. Get some rest.”

Tommy refused to dignify that with an answer. Instead he pulled out his own cigarette case and lit up again. The laudanum was starting to kick in so his hands were thankfully a bit steadier. “So, if my current plan for Mosley and his new party is doomed for failure, what am I supposed to do instead?”

Jessie sighed, but allowed him to change the subject. “With people like Mosley, the best options are to speak out. We have to get people to stop listening to him. It’s a lot safer for us if he vanishes into obscurity than if he’s dead.”

“And how is that supposed to work?” he grumbled.

“Firstly, the rally I told you about, about fascism,” she said. “It’s in a couple weeks. You could still speak. Publicly denounce Mosley, explain why fascism is wrong. You’re a good public speaker, the people of Birmingham honestly kind of love you, and Mosley’s done a lot to position you as his right-hand man so if you turn on him it’ll make a big impression.”

Tommy stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. He didn’t say anything.

“Tommy,” Jessie prodded.

“I’ll think about it,” He said.

“You just admitted to trying to kill Mosley and you’ve been talking socialism in Parliament for literally years, why wouldn’t you do this?” Jessie asked.

“I said I’d think about it,” Tommy growled.

Jessie said nothing. After a minute she stubbed out her cigarette and got up. “At some point you’re going to have to take a public stand for what you actually believe in,” she said. “You’re an MP now; you can’t just keep lurking in the shadows claiming allegiance to whoever is most useful to you at the time.”

“Funny,” Tommy said. “I thought that was exactly what people in power did.”

Jessie’s mouth opened and closed a couple times. It was obvious he’d caught her. It was just a little satisfying to see her finally rendered speechless. After a minute, she turned on her heal and stalked out. Tommy really hoped she had enough sense not to be seen on her way out. He heaved a sigh and threw his head back, staring up at the ceiling.

“I asked you to come to me,” Grace said. Tommy went rigid. “You didn’t.”

He took a deep breath and lowered his head. Grace was standing against the wall behind his desk, her back pressed against the framed horse painting. There was bloody hole in her chest. Tommy knew from horrible experience that there was a matching hole in her back. There would be blood on the horse portrait behind her. She hadn’t appeared like this—with the wounds that had killed her—at first, but apparently this was the reality of how she appeared now. He swallowed hard and tried to look anywhere but that wound. His head was still pounding; shouldn’t the laudanum have helped with that at least?

“Why didn’t you come?” Grace asked. “Don’t you love me?”

“Of course, I love you,” Tommy breathed.

“Then join me now,” Grace beckoned. “It will be so much better. You’ll finally be able to rest.”

“I can’t,” Tommy breathed. “I need to fix this first. I can’t just leave Arthur and Lizzie in the middle of this alone. They’re helpless. What will happened to Charlie and Ruby? Who’s going to save them? Polly? _Michael?_ ” he snorted.

“That’s not what you want, though, is it?” Grace asked softly. Someone with a bullet hole in their chest should not have been able to sound so gentle.

“No,” Tommy breathed. After Saturday it shouldn’t have felt like a confession, but it did. “But the family needs me.” He pointedly didn’t think of the things Frances had said out in the field. The stuff about things to look forward to for himself. He wasn’t sure exactly why that thought made him so uncomfortable but there wasn’t time to think about it. There wasn’t time to think about anything other than solving this Mosley problem as quickly as possible. He couldn’t allow himself to think of anything else. If he did he’d drown in the weight of it all.

“Tom! Tommy!”

Someone shook him and Tommy blinked. Grace was gone but Ada was there, kneeling on the floor in front of him, looking worried. “What?” he asked.

“Are you back now?” Ada asked.

“I never left,” Tommy said. Speaking was harder than it should have been. He felt heavy, like he was about to sink through the chair onto the floor.

Ada’s face was a mask of worry. “You weren’t responding,” she said. “You need to lay off the laudanum, Tommy. This isn’t healthy or safe.”

“I’m fine,” Tommy said. Which even he was willing to admit was a total lie, but it was still a thing that needed to be said.

“When was the last time you ate?” Ada said. “Actually, don’t answer that. I’m sure it was a terrifyingly long time ago.” She stood up, using his knees to lever herself up. “Come on, we’re going to lunch.”

Tommy’s stomach flipped at the thought. “It’s not lunchtime,” he said, rubbing his eyes in a useless attempt at clearing his head.

“It’s twelve thirty,” Ada said, somehow becoming even more worried.

He’d obviously lost some time. That wasn’t necessarily a new happening, Tommy just wished he was losing time because he was falling asleep not because his brain was skipping out on him. “I’m not hungry,” he said.

“You need to eat, Tommy,” Ada said. “We both know you’re not eating, and all that alcohol and laudanum is probably killing your stomach.”

He sighed. “Ada—”

“Nope,” she held up a finger to stop him. “I don’t want to hear it. We’ve already established that you’re incapable of looking after yourself these days, so I’m making the decisions. We’re going to lunch. Get your coat.”

He resented being ordered around by his own sister, but at this point just going along with her required less energy.

~~~~

It took Tommy a pathetically long time to realize the cacophony assaulting him was not in his head. He shifted and tried to pry his eyelids open. They were heavy and sticky and wanted to stay closed. He wasn’t sure where he was or what time it was, but he recognized that he’d actually been asleep this time not just gone. That was a relief, but he wished that everything would be fucking quiet.

As he woke up, he began to be able to place the sounds bombarding him. Ada and Karl were having a shouting match upstairs and the phone was ringing. Compared to the war it really shouldn’t have been bad, but anything was annoying when you had just been awoken from the first sleep you’d gotten since at least Thursday.

There was no chance of falling asleep again with all this noise. Tommy shifted a bit. He was slumped on Ada’s couch, neck twisted awkwardly to one side. He tried to sit up a bit straighter and to stretch out his neck. He finally managed to keep his eyes open and realized he was covered in a familiar old quilt. It was one their mother’s, all patched from years of use. Tommy knew the rest of the family had divided up a lot of the things they’d had at Watery Lane when they’d moved out, but he hadn’t wanted any mementos of that hellhole so he hadn’t participated. He’d never thought to wonder if Ada had.

The phone stopped ringing, which was a relief though Ada and Karl were still shouting upstairs. Between the numerous walls and doors separating them and Tommy’s own grogginess, he couldn’t tell what the subject of the argument was. It was still a bit disconcerting; he’d known Ada was having difficulties with Karl, but this sounded like more than difficulties.

The phone started ringing again and Tommy cursed under his breath. When it rained it poured, apparently. The ringing was more maddening than the sound of shouting. After a moment he pushed the quilt aside and hauled himself to his feet. It was a lot harder than it should have been; his body didn’t seem to have completely woken up yet. Still he eventually made it to the phone on its table in the hallway and answered. “Hello?”

“Ada, thank—” It was Lizzie’s voice. “Tommy?”

“Yeah?” Tommy said. “What do you need Ada for?”

“I was calling looking for you,” Lizzie said. “I called your apartment and your office and no one answered. Then I called your secretary and he said you hadn’t come back after lunch.”

She didn’t say _“I was worried”_ which was fine, because Tommy could tell she had been and that was uncomfortable enough. He wondered if Frances had told Lizzie about what had happened in the field on Saturday morning. It was possible. He hadn’t actually remembered to order Frances not to tell. There was also the possibility that Lizzie had just worked things out on her own, which was almost more worrying.

“I’m at Ada’s,” Tommy said, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to say any of that.

“Well, I know that now, don’t I, Tom?” Lizzie asked some exasperation creeping into her voice.

Tommy elected to ignore that in favor of studying the small clock sitting on the phone table. He wasn’t wearing his glasses so he had to squint to read it. It was after seven. He vaguely remembered that he and Ada had come back here after lunch and that he’d sat on the couch smoking while Ada ran upstairs to get something. That must have been when he’d fallen asleep. That had been hours ago.

The shouting upstairs raised in volume. Tommy could pick out a word or two now, which only made him more worried about the whole thing.

“What is all that racket in the background?” Lizzie asked.

“Ada and Karl are having a row,” he said. “I’m not sure what about.”

“Ada and Karl?” Lizzie repeated. She sounded a bit shocked, which wasn’t an easy emotion to squeeze out of Lizzie who walked through life with a degree of cynicism to rival Tommy’s own. The fact that she apparently hadn’t known about any difficulties Ada was having with Karl made Tommy somewhat uncomfortable. He and Ada had discussed the things Karl was picking up at school just before the stock market crash, and he’d assumed that if he’d heard about it all the Shelby women already had. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.

“What did you need to tell me?” he asked instead of answering any of Lizzie’s unspoken questions.

“I was just checking in,” Lizzie said. “How did you meeting with Mosley this morning go?”

“Fine,” Tommy said curtly, hoping she wouldn’t push. He was far from the only person in London and Birmingham who paid off telephone operators. They still didn’t know how much help their betrayer had and how large a reach the person pulling the strings had. And there had to be someone pulling the strings. Their current suspect wouldn’t have been the mastermind. “I’ll probably be in London for the rest of the week,” he went on. He hadn’t actually made the decision until right then but it was logical, it was going to take everything he had to win back Mosley’s trust.

Lizzie was silent for a long minute. “I’ll keep an eye on things in Birmingham then,” she finally said. “Is there anything I need to know to do that?”

“Talk to Uncle Charlie and see how he is,” Tommy said, hoping Lizzie would understand she needed to get Uncle Charlie’s report. “I didn’t get around to going to the Yard to see to him over the weekend. And talk to Billy at the Midland.” Billy had been reporting on Michael’s movements since he and Gina had started staying there. “You’ll need to bring some money. I have a bill at the Midland that needs to be paid.” Normally he would have left these things until he was back in Birmingham, but things were moving too fast for these reports to wait.

“Alright,” Lizzie said, business-like. She understood. She hadn’t been his secretary for years without picking some things up. Once she got the reports, he’d have to arrange for them to call each other on toll phones so they could speak freely. “But if I do this for you, Tom, you need to do something for me.”

Tommy suppressed a groan. Lizzie would never have dared say something like that before he’d married her. “And what would that be, Lizzie?”

“Stay at Ada’s,” Lizzie said.

Again, he wondered if Frances had told Lizzie something or if she’d just figured it out on her own. Lizzie wasn’t stupid and she saw more of him than Polly and Arthur did these days. “I have an apartment precisely so I don’t have to stay at Ada’s,” he said.

“I know,” Lizzie said. “But stay at Ada’s anyway. It sounds like she could use help with Karl.”

Tommy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He’d known Lizzie knew or at least suspected some of what he’d been contemplating these last few months, but he’d never been sure how she felt about it, if she felt anything at all. He’d mostly convinced himself that she didn’t care if he killed himself and that she’d prefer him to be gone so he wouldn’t terrify Ruby anymore. It was uncomfortable to realize she was probably trying to make sure someone was around to keep an eye on him and keep him from ending things.

The shouting upstairs rose to a crescendo and Karl’s bedroom door shut with a slam. “I need to go,” Tommy said, guiltily thankful for the excuse to get off the phone.

“Tommy!” Lizzie began, but Tommy hung up before he could hear whatever she was about to say.

Ada’s heels thumped on the stairs and she stalked downstairs. “Tommy,” she stopped when she saw him. “Did we wake you? I’m sorry, I—”

“Lizzie called,” Tommy said, mostly to have something to cut her off with.

“Any specific reason?” Ada asked coming down the rest of the stairs.

“Just checking up,” Tommy said. “What’s up with Karl?”

Ada shook her head, her lips pursed in a way that made her look a lot like Polly. “I don’t want to talk about it. You want tea?”

Tea was not what Tommy wanted at all. He _wanted_ a drink and he _needed_ a dose of laudanum. That must have shown on his face, because Ada’s face tightened. “I’m going to make tea,” she said.

Tommy trailed her into the kitchen, not exactly sure why beyond that he didn’t exactly what to be alone. He sat at the kitchen table while she made tea.

“I’m sorry we woke you,” Ada said as she worked. “I meant to let you sleep until you woke up on your own.”

“We were supposed to go back to Parliament this afternoon, you know,” he said.

“Yes, but I wasn’t sure when the last time you’d slept was so I figured it was best to just leave you,” Ada said. “I would have moved you into a more comfortable position, but you probably would have woken, so I just settled for a blanket.”

Tommy didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t deny that now that he’d had some time to wake up he was feeling a bit better. Or at least as much as possible given he needed a laudanum fix. “What were you and Karl fighting about?” he changed the subject.

Ada deflated, she stood at the counter, her shoulders slumped. “You said you were going to ask Johnny Dogs to get in contact with Esme about Karl going on the road with her for a while. Did you remember to ask him?”

In fact, Tommy had completely forgotten, but that was actually a relief in these circumstances. “Johnny Dogs,” he took a deep breath and forced himself to go on. “Johnny Dogs might not be the optimum middleman these days.”

That got Ada’s attention. She turned around. “What happened with Johnny Dogs?” she asked.

He was going to have to tell her at some point. “We were betrayed on Friday night,” he said. “Someone sold out my plans. Lizzie suspects—” he stopped and swallowed hard. He had to face the facts. It was pathetic to keep hiding from them. “Lizzie and I suspect Johnny Dogs.”


End file.
